John is a teacher, psychotherapist and retired adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS known for his pioneering work in integrating nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. He is the author of a new book entitled In Touch (Sounds True, 2015) and founded the superb online journal, Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology (http://undividedjournal.com/). A long-time student of both Jean Klein and Adyashanti, he was asked to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt, and has facilitated self-inquiry groups for a number of years. He also offers workshops and retreats. John brings a depth of experience, insight, warmth and compassion to his teaching work, and is especially skillful in guided inquiries and one-on-one dialogues.

“Awakening does not end with the discovery of our true nature as open awareness. This is only the beginning of another process. Life also invites us to discover the true nature of our body and, by extension, the world. There is a natural movement of open, loving awareness to saturate the densest levels of form in order to meet and free the areas of greatest confusion and suffering"

Pamela Wilson has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human. Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, and the author of the forthcoming A Golden Retriever’s Guide to Joy, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!

"Pure balance supported by benevolent, unshakable strength is who we are. We are the medicine humanity needs, calm clarity with an all-seeing gaze. Join us as we un-contain the field of presence within, blessing all that is."

We all want to be awake all the way, enjoy our lives and be compassionate. Maybe even serve this Love. Yes? True? So, why hasn’t it happened all the way?

We all hope to wake up or try to step out of suffering. Our first taste of Being frees us for a moment from mind’s identification. Our lives change. Now it’s clear where we want to pitch our tent. And, yet we still identify with many illusions.

Life/She helps us cultivate Being thru offering the most wonderful challenges. Most of us develop thru pain. They are in the department of money, relationship, our body, thought forms, and work etc. We feel separate and long for relief. Where do we rest? What do we do? Do we face what is arising? Or, relax as formless being? It is about developing our relationship to each moment, no matter what the content is.

My own recent experience of a kidney transplant has and had many layers of challenges. Thru it all Diamond Peace carried me.

Please join me in exploring and bringing to the forefront your Humanity and Divine radiance. Discover the Beauty that you innately are! I am looking forward to sharing this day with you filled with realness and compassion.

Marlies Myoku brings a potent invitation into the Silence of our being. She has devoted her life to the Beloved. She has been offering Satsang & retreat since 2000, when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies works as a spiritual teacher, psychologist (trained in the Netherlands), Hakomi therapist, and Tantric educator internationally.

Nonduality offers a simple yet radical way to live our lives in a more natural and essential way - free from the suffering of our conditioning. However, for many seekers, there still remain pockets of conditioning that can pull us out of the sense of openness or presence; or that cause us to avoid certain areas or aspects of our lives.

Psychotherapy offers tremendous methods and techniques for changing and transforming our conditioning to help us become more compassionate, loving, and embracing of ourselves and our experience of the world. Yet, for many clients there is often still a sense of continual self-improvement needed; or of a nagging sense of low-grade dissatisfaction that remains despite the relatively better ‘sense of self’ that they have realized.

Each of these methods can offer something to each other. Nonduality offers therapy clients a way to directly experience what is beyond their conditioning; to experience their essential nature that is before and beyond any and all attempts to improve themselves. Psychotherapy offers spiritual seekers a way to address and be with the deeper conditioning that can often remain impermeable to their own meditative inquiry; or that may remain unconscious - and out of awareness - yet manifest in unwanted ways.

Furthermore, a nondual approach - one that is grounded in presence - offers therapists a resource that deepens and informs their work with clients in a variety of ways. This orientation - when embodied by a therapist - can allow for much more safety and intimacy in the clinical relationship, and can open up the therapist to allow for more intuition, spontaneity, and trust in how they relate to their clients and the issues they present.

Riyaz Motan, MFT is a psychotherapist with a private practice in San Rafael. He is an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, as well as being a clinical supervisor to CIIS students. From early on in his career, he has been interested in the integration of Eastern wisdom traditions with Western Psychology. His particular passion is on a nondual approach to psychotherapy. He offers consultation, trainings, groups, and presentations on this integrated approach.

You are invited to join Tom as we explore this experience called me and my world. We’ll begin with an introduction followed by a brief guided meditation, then open dialogue. There is no question or concern that is too unworthy to be addressed. Often the most deep rooted problems are our gateway to the Love that we all are. Through this process Tom holds a sweet tender kindness that makes many who work with him feel held and safe. Within this supportive framework our full humanness is embraced and touched. As we radically accept and meet the worst of the worst, a gentle piercing happens as the entirety of our human experience melts in Being’s all-embracing arms, this ever present Love. We see that we are that Love, this sweetness that unconditionally holds our humanness.

In 2000, after a lifelong battle trying to hold onto his false sense of a separate self, Tom’s fight against Reality spontaneously ended, resulting in a shift into unitive consciousness or Being. Shortly thereafter, Tom was asked to share and has since been holding small group meetings at his home in Oregon and also with a group in Virginia. Tom is known for his humility and a profound acceptance of what is. The guidance moving through him has flavors of Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Buddhism and, most importantly, an ongoing revelation of living in the moment.

John is a teacher, psychotherapist and retired adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS known for his pioneering work in integrating nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. He is the author of In Touch: How to Tune into the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself (Sounds True, 2015) and founded the superb online journal, Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology (http://undividedjournal.com/).

A long-time student of both Jean Klein and Adyashanti, he was asked to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt, and has facilitated self-inquiry groups for a number of years, as well as daylong workshops and longer retreats. John brings a depth of experience, insight, warmth and compassion to his teaching work, and is especially skillful in guided inquiries and one-on-one dialogues.

“As we explore the heart, it’s a bit like an archeological dig. The heart is an incredibly sensitive instrument that we learn to guard. When we go into these places, they start unfolding, and some essential quality starts to begin to show itself. At the back of the heart there’s a beautiful radiance that begins to shine, a unique expression of universal consciousness, a capacity for remarkable intimacy. Often the heart opens up backwards into this huge space, but eventually all around, and then we’re in the universal heart, the cosmic heart, the great heart. And this is the place of knowing our essential non-separateness from everything, a place that can hold the collective suffering of humanity and transmute it. This is the movement of redemptive love.”

Pamela Wilson has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human. Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, and the author of the forthcoming A Golden Retriever’s Guide to Joy, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!

“Here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body-mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call; as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing. Join with your fellow sages in satsang, sharing what you are noticing is an act of love.”

This special daylong intensive will take place outside on private property on Oak Manor Dive in Fairfax, on 50 acres of ridgetop land, with beautiful views of Mount Tam and the surrounding area, and with trails for walking. We hope to offer more retreats in the future on this land, as the grounds and buildings are developed, so this is also an opportunity for a preview of what will hopefully be an occasional retreat space for Open Circle events.

A light organic vegetarian lunch will be provided, or you may bring your own food, or head out for lunch to the Good Earth Natural Foods or a number of local restaurants.

Pamela evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one's identity relax. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please join us and bring your questions!

"Every thought, every feeling, is a visitor. You just say: Welcome. Come in and sit with me."
"There is a notion that we left paradise a long time ago. But this secret garden was the Heart, always here, just waiting for our return."
"Love is a magician. Everything it touches turns into itself."www.pamelasatsang.com

You are cordially invited to join Pamela and Friends for an online retreat: The Mystic's Lair, an inner tour of the mystery of embodied space.

"Though the space within us may often feel like a wind swept lake, every movement within has an equal intelligence as the surrounding stillness. As a tribe, we have cultivated our Sage and Warrior but neglected the Mystic. It is the Mystic that stands at the center of everything, offering balance and the blessing of rest to anything identified.

In truth, the inner mystic has been defended and hidden by the Sage and the Warrior, not because of its tenderness, but because it is the most powerful. Delaying its unveiling, until the mountain strength was rooted and the wisdom clear and un-contained. In all stories, the final act is called the denouement, after the french word to untie.

To untie that which is bound is child's play to the Mystic who sees how the universe is woven, who loves all the colors and the knots, and even honors the tension that keeps the habitual in place. Misunderstandings return to understanding. Defending resolves into rootedness and pure being shines freely."

Over a series of 4 sessions join Pamela and like-minded community in this deep exploration of our inner Mystic.

This online retreat format is an exciting container that allows for deeper work with the consistency and
support of a teacher and community — without the normal cost and logistics that an on location retreat entails.
It also provides the unique opportunity to be opening and exploring deeply while still living your daily life.

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Pamela Wilson has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the Sage within everyone and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Pamela evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please join us and bring your questions!

“The ego does die, but it is not what many think. The caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, dies to its old form and can never go back to being a caterpillar. Yet, if you look closely, the main body of it still retains its caterpillar form. Recognize that you are an ego and do not pretend to have wings by using non-duality jargon. We intuit the source within; now let us offer our self in devotional surrender as ego incarnate to the fire of grace. It is this fire which burns away all that is exclusive and leaves in its place a refined personality under the sole sovereignty of Love, which makes the will of the individual the will of the One. Giving rise to a complete human being.”

Atreya Thomas, author of Revealing the Absolute, Awakening into a Complete Human Being; and Revealing the Christ, is an extra-ordinary teacher who grew up in the inner cities of New Jersey; and writes as he speaks. Having cut his own path from outside any particular “school,” he speaks from experience free of dogma, and the results are fresh and enlivening; while bringing a unique urban style. His own life combines the duties of householder, devotee, and teacher in a lifestyle that focuses on being awake in the midst of ordinary life.

Atreya Thomas is a father of five children whom were all adopted through foster care. He continues to foster drug exposed newborns with his wife in California and works closely with underprivileged communities. Atreya holds Satsangs where invited, works as a preschool teacher, studied Medicinal Qigong for 20 years, and holds a degree in Psychology.

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About Open Circle

The Open Circle is part of a new spiritual paradigm grounded in experiential awareness, rather than belief systems. We’re a non-sectarian community dedicated to supporting the practices of mindful and open hearted awareness, drawing inspiration from a variety of spiritual, psychological, and scientific traditions, which point to direct experience as a source of wisdom and love.